


Magnolias

by MeanderingWits



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 07:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeanderingWits/pseuds/MeanderingWits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Visiting Alfred, Yao finds himself caught between memories of an old flame and a new desire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magnolias

The first time China saw the magnolias, it was in spring and he thought idly to himself that America still had the ability to surprise him.  
  
Yao's people had a habit of scattering everywhere, like poppy seeds on the wind or lotus pods in the current. They spread wherever gold and opportunity called, prospering and taking root no matter how difficult or inhospitable the new soils were. He did not outlast so many of his peers and those that came after him without adapting himself. _Xiang banfa_ was him distilled. And where his people went, he went. China was the center of the world, the kingdom of heaven, and only time could dislodge him from such a high perch.  
  
(He thought of Rome. They met a few times, long ago. Chance meetings in Persia's courts or desert outposts. Rough and bold, eager to learn but also greedy, ever ready for battle yet always chasing internal peace. Rome's long shadow was fading in more modern times, but his children and the children of other nations and their new children across the seas were built on his bones and still imbibed on that civilization's dreams. None that came after could compare, not even his bastard child England. But China's shadow was long too, and more enduring yet.)  
  
Even so, Yao did not visit those of his people who had made it to Alfred's eastern shores until after the younger nation had nearly rent himself in two. It was difficult enough to journey across the Pacific, to where his people had established themselves in San Francisco. He had seen enough there.  
  
Alfred's eastern cities were nothing he hadn't seen before. Crowded, dirty places, full of muck and lacking in beauty. (Such a child of England. Such a grandchild of Rome.) He mostly visited the northeast. The southern cities were still smoking with tension and memories and Alfred would wince in their meetings as the thick scar across his waist pulsed with hate and pain.  
  
Seeing Alfred stride across Washington's promenades, broad shoulders squared and moving forward despite the pain, put him in melancholy mood. Rome's hair was curly and brown and blew in the wind just the same way as Alfred's straight gold.  
  
He thought idly that it was better that it was late spring. Kiku's gifts -- so many cherry trees, a claim if he ever saw one from an increasingly bold younger brother -- were blessedly green and devoid of flowers.  
  
"You should come down to my home away from the city," Alfred was saying idly. (Limping. Sit down, young man, there was time yet.) "Washington in the summer is no fun for anyone, you know? Even my officials run for the hills!"  
  
"If that's the case, you should build more gardens," Yao chided. "Or move your capital. I've done that many times. The court will move from a summer location to a winter location and maybe more. It's so strange to build a city in an unsuitable place."  
  
Alfred's smile grew strained. "Yes, well, there was a reason for building it here." Whatever the reason was, the true one, Alfred skipped over it. "Besides, we've got a tradition of building in places that everyone thought would be a disaster and we tend to turn out fine. Thinking on it, it's probably Arthur's fault. I mean, he started Jamestown in a swamp."  
  
Yao did not want to think about England. He didn't want to think about France, Spain, Portugal, Russia, the Netherlands. His upstart brother, Japan. His younger siblings paying fealty to distant shores. America. The bile would rise in his throat and the scent of gunpowder and opium would get stuck in his nostrils and he would try -- try, try, TRY -- to remember who he was and what he had accomplished and overcome the indignities when the time was right.  
  
He changed the topic quickly, which is how he found himself at Alfred's Virginia estate.  
  
Alfred said that it wasn't his first home in Virginia, but it had been his for a very long time and he was rather attached to it. Yao felt England again in its solid and plain brick, but also sensed a whiff of France in the building's effort for elegance and balance in the face of practicality. He looked at the white columns of the entrance and Latin carved in the stone above the doorway.  
  
_E pluribus unum. Fecisti patriam diversis de gentibus unam_.  
  
Rome had a loud laugh. Like America's. It had an inherent confidence in itself and inherently drowned everything else out. Yao wondered if England knew what he had reared. Or rather, left alone in the wilderness to grow.  
  
America would become a problem. Alfred too, possibly.  
  
Younger brothers should know their places in the world. With this in mind, he still hated England.  
  
After changing out of his sweaty Western clothes to a lighter outfit and leaving his belongings in the servant's silent hands, he was directed to the back porch. It was large enough to be a room of its own, large and airy, floored with solid and old hardwood. Yao imagined that the few gas lamps installed into the ceiling were the only parts of this porch that had changed much. Again, the white columns put him in mind of an older age, and a jovial host smiling at him from across a white-clothed table laden with fruits and meat split his perception of time in two. In mind, he supped under a night sky as a dark-haired nation spoke of trade, silk, and civilization; in body, he supped under the blinding sun as a golden-haired nation spoke of the same things.  
  
Would this meeting follow the same path? Would he fall into a younger lover's bed again? The thought was tempting. Rome was a grown man when they met; Rome had seen many other nations and had been to war many times, triumphing over old Greece, old Egypt, Carthage, Judea, the rabble of Celtic nations. Alfred still had some baby fat in his cheeks. Fortunately hemmed in by two great seas and weaker neighbors, he had little to worry about. He had the destructive innocence of a greedy child.  
  
But Yao always loved gold, and that tanned skin and youth was just as tempting now as it had been back then. The iced peaches were delicious.  
  
Even so, he should be polite. There was a dance to these things. Delicate, like the movements of a fan or a sword to the throat.  
  
"What flowers are those?" He indicated with a nod to the flowers given a place of honor on the table. They were large and showy, like his host. Creamy white petals cupped a golden tower, offset by waxy green leaves, and smelling of lemon or citron. He was almost reminded of a lotus. He hadn't seen these in California. He could also see trees bearing much of the same in the garden, stunning white in the sunlight.  
  
"The flowers?" Alfred repeated, mouth full of peach. "Magnolias! Er...how do you say it... _mù lán_?" Of course, his language was butchered. England's tongue and Rome's letters. "I think that's it."  
  
"Those are the emperor's flowers!" But the flowers he knew were smaller, less showy. And that white color was too ghostly for his taste. Death. The ones in the temples and the emperor's gardens were purer, the white undercut by an auspicious streak of pink. "These cannot be the same."  
  
Alfred shook his head, "No, they're magnolias. Just a different kind." Yao noted the proud puffing of his chest. "Mine. There are only a few of these kinds this far north, but they're a lot of them further south. Most of the ones in the garden here are a different native kind. You should've seen England, he brought them back to his place right away back in the day!" Alfred's smile was enthusiastic and bright and Yao didn't know whether to punch him or kiss him.  
  
Magnolias. Purity and nobility, but like a lot of what he found in the West, showy and tinged with mortality.  
  
"Do you want to bring some seeds home with you? They're pretty hardy, if you grow 'em in the right places."  
  
"It's fine, _Meiguo_." In fact, it gave him an idea. Kiku's ostentatious gift annoyed him -- and right in Alfred's capital! But why not provide his own gift? True magnolias, a beneficence from a emperor to this new place, so bright and so dangerous. An acknowledgment and a promise. "Why don't I give you some of mine? They're smaller, but pink is a good color. You can never have too much good luck. It is useful in medicine."  
  
Alfred brightened. "That'd be great! Kiku gave me a few -- we're calling it _liliiflora_ \-- but do you have other kinds because --"  
  
Yao smiled through the rest of the conversation, but in the back of his mind, he seethed. He would stand proud on his own two feet again. Equal if not stronger than Rome, than Rome's upstart children, than Japan, than America now and in the future. And he'd see Alfred awed and sated in a bed strewn with poppy and magnolia petals, piled high in red silk and gold embroidery. He'd think of how his shadow will still endure and how younger brothers should mind their places.


End file.
